Barney Frank

These days it's gotcha this, gotcha that, and gotcha journalism and gotcha politics.

This notion that the Director cannot be removed is fanciful.

If uncertainty is an issue and you want to get past the process of resolving what happened before and what is the basis for the rules going forward, then you shouldn't have more delay. You need to have rules now.

But the notion that in adopting regulation, we should deal only with things that have already proven to be problematic and not try to anticipate and not try to make other improvements, I think is a grave error.

I don't understand how you reconcile an argument that uncertainty is our major problem with a plea for more uncertainty by delaying the rule.

It wasn't in the House, but there was a press conference in the White House that I attended long before it got to the end

If people don't like the rule, they don't like the rule. But if you look at the implementation... I think the notion that people are going to be scared away from doing market making because of an excessive rigidity has no real foundation.

They use the fact that because of them it is all coming from the taxpayer as a reason not to fund it adequately.

What we have is a significant lack of funding for the CFTC.

This is an interesting switch. For some time now, I have been hearing my Republican colleagues complain about overregulation.

The regulators are not the Salvation Army.

Representative Frank recognizes and preserves the role of the individual States as well as the joint nature of the RFMC relationship.

If too many fish are caught, all the excess is deducted, but if it turns out the amount of the catch was under what was allowed, in some places they only get 10 percent of that.

I appreciate your reference. I got here and noticed I didn't have any table.

Prohibition of an entirely voluntarily activity rarely works in a free society, certainly with something as expansive and accessible as the Internet.

I am for as much freedom as I can get for people as long as they are not hurting others.

I don't think we should ban either poker or anything else that is voluntary, doesn't hurt anybody else, including gambling.

Do we single out the Internet for specific prohibitions and restrictions?

I had thought there was a consensus in this Congress, particularly strongly held by my Republican colleagues: Hands off the Internet, don't interfere with the Internet.

We should neither encourage it nor discourage it. And not making something illegal is not an encouragement of it or an endorsement of it.

There are some things that are damaging to others and the government should prohibit.

The notion we should ban in a society for everybody things that are OK for adults because children might get to them is the end of freedom.

The current regime is one of the most intrusive regulations on the banking industry that you can find.

I thought that was the reverse of what people were talking about, because the legislation that unfortunately passed the Congress came out of the Committee on Financial Services enforces the prohibition on gambling.

If we don't want to tell an 8-year-old what to eat for lunch, why are we telling the 8-year-old's parent, a 28-year-old, no, you can't gamble, we don't think that is appropriate?